Last year, I used 1118, per the recommendation of the homebrew shop owner. I think it's just a champagne yeast, and it tasted really good. This year, I used Red Star Côte de Blancs per the recommendation of another LHBS owner (I moved).

I had to back sweeten last year, and Côte doesn't ferment to dryness, so maybe it will help there.

I haven't done a tasting yet, racking to secondary this week. The Côte put of a ton of sulfur though. It filled my apartment with egg smells for a long time.

I love BB wine. It is probably the best/easiest fruit wines one can make. The best thing about BB wine is that you can use 1/2 the BB as water and still have a very rich, bold wine. Which mean less fruit to pick. I recommend adding in some raisins and don't forget some oak. I also recommend letting it age. It is amazing at 3 months, but give it a year and it will blow you away! Oh and if you get a chance, make some cherry. Also an amazing wine fruit.

I just made a batch and I didn't end up adding any water. I used a little under 4lbs/gallon. Granted I also had a bunch of loss during racking, but I like my blackberry wine really flavorful. I'm not sure what the OG of the must was, but we added 12 pounds of sugar to 6 gallons to get to somewhere between 1.110 and 1.120 (it was really thick).

I just made a batch and I didn't end up adding any water. I used a little under 4lbs/gallon. Granted I also had a bunch of loss during racking, but I like my blackberry wine really flavorful. I'm not sure what the OG of the must was, but we added 12 pounds of sugar to 6 gallons to get to somewhere between 1.110 and 1.120 (it was really thick).

So you're saying A) 4lbs of blackberries = 1 gallon of juice
and B) the SG of the juice was ~30?

Just clarifying.

Table sugar is ~45 pppg, so if we can assume that all your sugar was in solution - then 90 points of your 110-120 came from sugar leaving 20 or 30 to be from blackberries. If you have any other details, I'd be glad to have them! I'm not quite following you with the 4lbs of berries per gallon. You said you didn't add any water, but a gallon weighs double that.

I would have assumed it's something like 12-15lb of berries per gallon, and the SG of the resultant juice would be 45-55 points. Again, any info for those of us who haven't done this yet would be great!

I checked with SWMBO and she reminded me that we added water to the blender. Guessing around a gallon total, maybe a little more.

We used 56 6oz containers of blackberries, which works out to 21 lbs. We added them to a blender (4-5 packs at a time) and added water to the blender so that it wouldn't just spin freely. Ended up with 5.5 gallons including the pulp. After racking it ended up at or just below 4 gallons, so maybe 5lbs/gal depending which volume you use.

I agree with your math, all I know is what happened. The juice of these berries was a lot more red than what I used last year, and maybe they had less sugar too. I was expecting to only use 8lbs of sugar, but was under gravity. I probably should have only used 10.

Last year we did 4lbs/gal and had to add a few gallons of water, definitely more than this time. Last year's turned out really well, just the right amount of body, but it was a 15% wine, not a port.

Sorry, got threads mixed up, this isn't about port. I think you'd be working magic to get 10lbs of berries per gallon. Definitely not 12-15. Like you said, water is around 8lbs, so a gallon of juice is close to that. Actually more like 8.5 of you factor in the sugar, the pulp is neutrally buoyant until fermentation starts, so I'm assuming it weighs about the same.

From my experience, I'd say 6lbs would be the most you could do if you didn't use a mesh bag (which I didn't) or MAYBE 8 if you strain out the pulp. But I think that would end up feeling pretty thick, in my opinion. I'm definitely no expert, this is just based on my observations having finished one batch and halfway through a second.